“Then why do I need to stop?” Her eyes pinged down to his lips. That’s all it took for his mouth to water, for his lips to tingle in anticipation of one of her candied kisses.
“Because it feels too good. Your soft lips have made me hard again.” To prove his point, he tilted his pelvis. Since she was straddling his hips, his turgid cock slid hot and hard against her delicate feminine flesh.
She moaned, screwing her eyes shut. When she opened them again, he saw a familiar glint of devilry. “Again, you say that like it’s a bad thing.”
He flipped her over until he was looming above her. When he pinned her hands over her head, she giggled with delight.
“When I make you come again,” he swore, “it will be with my cock. Inside you. And since we’ve still no condoms, that means no more shenanigans. Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind and are keen to have me running downstairs to ask Ace and Rusty if—”
“No!” she wailed, struggling ineffectually against his restraining hands. “I’ll die of embarrassment. I swear to God. Can’t we just—”
“Indeed not.” He cut her off before she could put into words whatever physical delight she had in mind. If he heard her mention anything that included her mouth on his dick, he might lose the will to naysay her, and truly, he was determined to hold fast to his convictions.
All they had already done together was incredibly raw and mind-meltingly sexy. But it lacked the intimacy of joining their bodies, of rocking each other to completion as they stared into one another’s eyes.
If he wanted her to fall in love with him, his first step must surely be to make love to her.
“Why not?” she demanded, a pout on her lips.
“I have my reasons.” He loved how her eyes narrowed.
Preparing himself to become the victim of her sharp tongue, he was surprised when she huffed, “Fine. Have it your way. But if we’re not going to sixty-nine…” He groaned. There it was. The image of her mouth on his dick sprang to Technicolor life inside his head. “Then you have to make it up to me with another truth.”
“Buggering hell.” He rolled off her to toss an arm over his eyes. “You and your bloody truths. They’ll be the death of me.”
“I’m serious.” She snuggled close to his side and tweaked his nipple.
“Ow!” He smacked her ass.
“Ow!” She tweaked his nipple harder.
And then it was on. The absolute sexiest wrestling match of his life. She bucked and hissed and nipped at him with her teeth until, once again, he was atop her with her wrists secured above her head. They were both blowing hard from the exertion. Both incredibly turned on. It was a vast improvement over the tears from earlier.
“Let that be a lesson to you, witchy woman.” He was so tempted to kiss her lips that he had to bite the inside of his cheek. If he kissed her, they would be sixty-nine-ing so fast her head would spin.
“Oh?” She blinked up at him, all innocence and seduction. “And what lesson would that be?”
“I’m bigger than you. Stronger than you. Faster than you.”
“Maybe,” she allowed. There was that hypnotic grin again. “But I’m smarter. You’re right back where I want you.”
To prove her point, she wrapped her legs around his waist and rubbed herself against him. She was so hot, so soft and slick. His eyes crossed.
“Damnit!” He threw himself off her again. Her wicked laughter followed him across the bed when he determinedly put two feet between them.
“Okay, fine.” She scooted next to him, tossed a leg across his thighs, an arm across his chest, and tucked her head beneath his chin. “We’ll play by your rules, you big, hairy butthead. But if we’re not going to be switching hammocks—”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know, doing the whole over-under thing.”
“You’ve lost me.”
There was laughter in her voice when she said, “Dukes of Hazzard?”
“Are you speaking English?” he demanded. “Or ’Merican? Because I’m having the devil of a time figuring out what you’re on about.”
“Sixty-nine-ing, Sir Slow on the Uptake.” The laughter in her voice turned into the real deal.
And there it was again. That image.
He groaned and once more tossed an arm over his eyes. Then he lowered it to the sheet and frowned up at the ceiling. “What does The Dukes of Hazzard have to do with it? You’re speaking of that silly show about two cousins in the South who were always running from Mr. Pig, right?”
“Boss Hog. And, yes, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“Then I fail to understand the reference in the context of…” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the phrase. He was already having a dreadful time not saying, To hell with it! and jumping her delicious bones for a vigorous bout of…switching hammocks.
“Remember how Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane and his trusty basset hound Flash used to chase the Duke boys all around Hazzard County? ‘This is Rosco P. Coltrane,’” she said, donning a Southern accent that was far better than her attempts at an English one, “‘and I’m in hot pursuit!’”
“Right. And that has to do with what we’re speaking of because…” He let the sentence dangle.
“Because that souped-up orange car the Duke boys drove was a—”
“Sixty-nine Dodge Charger,” he interrupted. “Okay, I get it.”
“Figured you would. Let no one ever say you don’t know your cars.”
Despite himself, he chuckled. “Really, darling. These euphemisms of yours…”
“Seriously? You must have forgotten that conversation in the pickup truck. Gentleman sausage, todger, tallywhacker? Any of that ringing a bell?”
“Touché,” he allowed, loving that she let him pull her close. “But aren’t you a bit young to have watched The Dukes of Hazzard?”
“Yep.” She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his chest. “Too young to have watched The Dukes of Hazzard or I Love Lucy or Bonanza or Bewitched. But considering I was a latchkey kid with no supervision and nothing to do once I got home from school every day, it’s no wonder the television and all those old reruns became my friends.” Before he could dwell, once again, on how wretched both their childhoods had been, she said, “So about this next truth.”
“I suppose it was too much to hope that we’d gotten far enough off topic that you’d forgotten about that.”
“Now that I’m on to your game, Christian Watsoning doesn’t work on me.”
He decided to give up on his demand that she stop using his name as a verb. He sighed resignedly. “Then let’s have it. What truth are you on about now?”
“What happened to your mom?” His breath stuttered in his chest. “I mean, after you sent her to rehab, what happened?”
Being in the old manor house had brought back so many memories. Good memories. Memories of a time when both his parents had been young and full of laughter and unbroken by the horrors of life.
He could clearly remember his mum in a blue sundress standing in front of the mural on the far wall. He and his dad had been walking around the room, looking at the tiny figurines on the tables, but his mum had only stood there, studying that mural for ages, her dark hair catching and holding the fading light streaming through the windows, burning like the sun itself.
It was one of the last happy days he’d spent with her.
Chapter 18
“She checked herself out of the rehab facility after a month, hitched a ride back home, collected her waiting government support checks, and took herself to the pub.”
Christian’s tone was frighteningly neutral. If Emily hadn’t gotten to know him so well, his matter-of-fact words might have seemed harsh. But she could feel the tension in his muscles, hear the roughness in his voice.
He hurt for the woman who had birthed him. Hurt for he
r, missed her, and very likely suffered no small amount of guilt that he hadn’t been enough to save her, even though the truth of the matter was, he’d done everything he could.
Emily ached for him. Always so put together. Always so stoic. Always so in control. But just as she’d suspected, he was as multilayered as an onion.
His surface was all poise and charm and self-assurance. But beneath that layer lay a fierce warrior, an incredibly passionate lover, a man with grit in his eye and steel in his spine. Yet, there were deeper layers still. Layers that held the loss of a father at too young an age. Layers that bore the fear and uncertainty and humiliation of living with a drunken, self-medicating mother. Layers that carried the horror and the scars of childhood abuse—she was still trying to wrap her head around how some sick shit could do that to a sweet, innocent boy.
Not to mention the thick layers he must have grown over the years of being a spec-ops warrior, she thought.
Crash! There they went. All those walls she’d built against him.
She supposed it had been inevitable. The minute she had agreed to go to bed with him, to stop the surface-level teasing and taunting and really get to know him, was the minute she’d given the go-ahead to the demolition team. But that didn’t lessen the fear that rushed in to take the place of her fortifications. It was one thing to let herself be physically vulnerable to the man, another thing entirely to let herself be emotionally vulnerable to him.
Because what did that emotional vulnerability even mean?
Not for a hot minute did she think it changed her inability to have lasting love. Which was good since he’d made it clear that the last thing he was looking for was a happily ever after. But still, now that she was emotionally wide open to him, now that she thought of herself as his friend—Oh, for the love of José Abreu, that was an odd concept, wasn’t it? Friends with the ever-annoying, always titillating Christian Watson?—he had the ability to hurt her.
What if he wanted to end things between them before she did? Or worse, what if he found someone else and fell in love? Emily could see it all so clearly, the irascible Christian Watson with his happy wife and happy life.
Truth was, she wanted that for him. She really did. But it would be agony having gotten to know him, having gotten to be with him, only to let him go when something better, something purer, something lasting came along.
“According to everyone who was there that night”—he dragged her from her troubling thoughts—“she had herself a proper piss-up. Downed two bottles of gin in about two hours and then stumbled home.”
“Good Lord.”
“The landlord found her three days later. She’d choked to death on her own vomit.”
Once again, tears threatened behind Emily’s eyes, but damned if she’d give in to them. This was his story, his tragedy. She wouldn’t take anything away from him by wallowing in her own grief.
For a long time he was quiet. She held him close, offering what comfort she could, knowing it wasn’t enough.
Finally, he said, “She was cremated. I had her remains secretly flown to Chicago. And then I sailed into the middle of Lake Michigan and let the wind and the water take what was left of her. Sometimes I wonder if I should have come back and done it here, sent her drifting down the Thames or something.” If Emily looked up, she felt certain she would see his brow furrowed. “But after Dad was gone, she was never happy in England. For most of her life, this place brought her nothing but sorrow. So I thought…you know…she could never make a fresh start here while she was alive, but I could take her somewhere to give her a fresh start in death.”
“I think you did the right thing. If that’s what felt right, you shouldn’t second-guess yourself.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He blew out a breath, then pointed at the far wall. “She liked that mural. Every time we came here, she would look at it and smile.”
Emily ducked her chin, her gaze drifting over the wall-sized piece of art. Shards of tile, mirror, and glass made up a mosaic garden scene. There were hundreds of colorful flowers, two brightly hued butterflies, and a cheery-looking dragonfly hovering near the corner.
The instant she had walked into the room, she had been drawn to it, just like Christian’s mom. She hated to think she had anything in common with a woman who could neglect her child to such an inexcusable degree, but she also liked the thought that, once upon a time, his mother had been better, been more, been good to him.
“Do you suppose it explains your need for control?” she heard herself ask.
“What? The fact that I had none as a child?”
She nodded. She’d been thinking about how much she loved it when Christian tied her up. Thinking that the reason she liked giving up control wasn’t only because her job meant she always needed to be on her toes, but also because, ever since she was a young girl, she’d always been the one steering her own ship, making all the decisions because her parents hadn’t been around to guide the way. Was the opposite true for him?
“Of course,” he said. “I don’t need to lie on a headshrinker’s sofa to know I am the way I am because I’m compensating for having no say in what I wore, how I lived, or whom my mother brought into the house when I was young.”
“I thought maybe the clothes and the car had more to do with you growing up poor. You know… Now that you have some cash, you want to show the world that the kid from the East End gutter had made something of himself.”
“Hardly,” he scoffed. “Designer clothes can be tailored. Same for handmade Italian shoes. I like having control over what I put on my body. Coming up, I had to wear whatever Mum could find in the charity shops.”
Made sense. And made him go up a few notches in her estimation—which she wouldn’t have thought was possible since she already respected the hell out of him. Truth was, she’d misjudged him every time she’d teased him for his fussy clothes. He wasn’t showing off. He was simply making up for a lot of years of neglect and chaos in a way that made him feel empowered.
“And the car?” she asked.
When he chuckled, she thought she’d never heard a more fabulous sound. “I fancy cars.”
Given the seriousness and heartbreak of their conversation, she was surprised to find herself smiling.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. She hadn’t realized how long until her stomach growled noisily, reminding her she’d forgotten to check her backpack for her stash of granola bars.
Easily remedied, she thought, ready to push out of bed and go in search of sustenance.
She was stopped, however, by a soft snore. Smiling, she grabbed the edge of the sheet, wrapped them both in a sweet-smelling cotton cocoon, and snuggled close to him. Food could wait. For now, she’d allow herself to enjoy lying in the mysterious and powerful and oh-so-human Christian Watson’s arms.
Another snore broke the silence and had her battling laughter. He snored. He snored!
He wasn’t so perfect after all.
Good. There was no fun in perfection.
* * *
Rusty had stomped upstairs to find a book to read, anything to take his mind off the golden-haired flyboy. But none of the titles had caught his eye, so he’d sat on one of the sofas and brooded. It was only after Ace shook him awake that he realized he’d unintentionally dozed off.
“Whaaa?” he asked groggily, frowning when he blinked and saw full-on darkness had claimed the room.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t full-on darkness. There were a couple of those plastic night-light thingies plugged into outlets that provided some light. Enough to see that, sure as shit, Ace was as annoyingly handsome as ever.
The rat bastard.
And why the hell did Rusty feel like the world stopped spinning every time he looked into those ocean blues?
“What time is it?” He peered through the darkness at his watch.
“A little before twen
ty-three hundred. Angel’s back,” Ace said. “He brought food with him. Well”—his expression twisted—“if you consider a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and some strawberry jam food. I thought you might be hungry. You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“Neither have you.” Rusty pushed into a seated position and realized…
Great. He’d drooled. Since there was no way to nonchalantly wipe the wet patch off his cheek, he thought fuck it and didn’t try to be coy. Using his sleeve, he scrubbed at the drool until his skin tingled and his beard stubble protested.
“Yeah.” Ace nodded. “But you’re a good fifty pounds heavier than I am. You need more calories than I do.”
All the anger and desire and embarrassment from earlier came back to Rusty in a flash. “So now you’re calling me fat? For crying in the sink, man, enough is enough.”
“You’re not serious.” Ace, who had been leaning toward him, straightened, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I’m dead serious. Ever since I told you about my folks, about not being out, you’ve been finding ways to insult me.”
“In what world?” Ace’s voice lifted an octave. It was too dark to be certain, but Rusty thought he saw two patches of red flood onto Ace’s cheeks. “I’m not the one who barged into the room you were in, slammed the door, and then started yelling. If memory serves, that was you!”
Rusty opened his mouth to respond, but Ace pressed on before he could. “You’re trying to make this about me, but the truth is it’s all about you!” Ace pointed a finger at Rusty’s nose, and Rusty was overcome with the intense desire to break the fucker off, or kiss it. He wasn’t sure which. “It’s about your shame, your fear. And it makes me so sad.” Ace shook his head. “Because our people have suffered so much, have fought so hard to be accepted, to gain us the same liberties and rights and freedoms that—”
“Our people?” Rusty interjected, shoving to a stand.
Ace stumbled back. Rusty liked that. Liked that Ace had to look up at him. He’d never used his size against someone before, at least not someone who wasn’t an enemy combatant, but he used it now, advancing on Ace, who retreated until he bumped into one of the wingback armchairs and could go no farther.
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